


Like a Dark Ocean (calling me home)

by ray_night



Series: On Distant Shores (he waits for me) [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Character Backstory, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Black Siren-centric, F/M, Morally Ambiguous Character, Stuck on Earth-1, not a redemption story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 05:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12336186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ray_night/pseuds/ray_night
Summary: On Earth-2, Oliver Queen was the good boy, and Dinah Lance the bad girl. Stuck in a world that is not her own, Black Siren is freed from her prison. In Star City, she finds herself confronted with a look-alike of her dead love, and long buried memories.





	Like a Dark Ocean (calling me home)

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, this is my try at a Black Siren backstory. It is not Canon-compliant at all, because when I wrote this, she had only made one appearance on the Flash. Thus, this story ignores the Black Siren seen on Arrow so far, and completely disregards whatever they are going to do with her in S6.  
> As much as I really, really wanted to fit Quentin into this, it just didn't make any sense in the context of this story. Maybe one day I'll write a second part to this, where the two meet. Also, Black Siren has no connection to Thea, so sadly also no Thea here.  
> This is part of a five-story collection, centering around Laurel Lance and Death; thus the corny line at the beginning of each story. Three of the other stories are already complete, and will be posted in the coming weeks.  
> Enjoy!

 

_And Death comes to visit but does not stay, carrying with Him fractured memories of moments He already stole._

 

So Malcolm Merlyn was alive in this universe.

Ironic, how fate sometimes played out.

In her world, she had never really known the man. He had died in a robbery shortly after she had first met Tommy. Back then, she couldn't have known about the dark path his death would lead his son down, hadn't even known Tommy long enough to see his spiraling coming. By the time it had become obvious, it had been too late. For him, and her.

They had met again a few years after Oliver's death, and gone from reluctant business partners, to lovers, to bitter enemies, to lovers again, ultimately settling on something like tolerance. Tommy had kept to his parts of the city, she to the Glades, and they had barely interacted since then.  
And in this strange world, where everyone and everything was upside down, Malcolm Merlyn was alive, and Tommy wasn't.

And here he was, this Earth's Dark Archer himself, offering her a deal, a way out of her prison.

She would have been a fool if she did not take it.

_...._

Of course Merlyn's goal was revenge. This didn't come as a big surprise to Dinah, not really. Ultimately, it was her own curiosity that drove her to agree to her role in this scheme.

The ambush was carefully planned, but very simply executed. Some hired goons distracted the girl in the red jacket and the guy with the helmet, while Merlyn himself drew the Green Arrow out from his perch and into the empty warehouse.

Hiding in the shadows, Dinah took a moment to study him. So different than the Green Arrow on her Earth, but in some aspects she recognized a likeness between father and son. The righteous anger, burning cool and controlled. The voice modulator, which made them sound almost alike. She watched these two copycats circle each other, father instead of son, son instead of father, mentally preparing herself for actually seeing Oliver Queen again, alive and in the flesh.

The cue for her dramatic entrance came and was promptly ignored. _This_ Dark Archer, for all that he fashioned himself oh so cunning and clever, had to learn that she was nobody's lapdog. Before Zoom had “recruited _”_ her, she had single-handedly ruled the criminal elements of the Glades. As such, Black Siren didn't appear when called – she came when she damn well felt like it.

Dinah almost sniggered out loud at the scene below her, at Merlyn's face when he realized that he'd been betrayed.

The ensuing fight between the two archers was riveting to watch. No quarter was given, and although one was younger and had the use of both hands, they seemed quite evenly matched. Another curiosity then.

Nonetheless and all too soon, Merlyn was on the ground, weapon lost somewhere to the side. While she was still deliberating on whether to let this Green Arrow just end this cheap version of the Dark Archer, the decision was abruptly taken out of her hands.

“I know that you have a friend waiting in the shadows, Malcolm”, so he wasn't as unaware as she'd first thought; she had to give him points for that.

“Show yourself! Or I end this miserable excuse for a man before me”, his voice bellowed, strong and clear and a shiver went through her. Even with the distortion of the voice modulator, it was a commanding tone her Ollie had never used.

In the end, it wasn't the order given that drew her down from the support beam she'd been perched on, but her own resolve to finally face him.

Her meta-human body had no trouble with the high jump, and she landed smoothly a few feet behind them in a crouch, coat billowing out behind her. The archer's bow came up almost instantly in her direction, while Merlyn scrambled backwards on the ground, clearly set on escape.

With a dark chuckle, she finally spoke, “Oh, you can kill him if you want, I really don't care either way.”

At the sound of her voice, the weapon pointing in her direction sank down, as if the bow had suddenly gained a hundred pounds and its wielder could no longer hold it upright, could no longer hold onto the bow string either as it was eased back into a resting position.

She rose, the moment she had anticipated having arrived, and for the first time in many years, Dinah Lance looked into the eyes of Oliver Queen.

He stumbled back, one hand tearing off his hood in confusion, as if it was at fault for making him see things that could not be real. Dinah took it all in – the lines on his face, the stubble on his chin, the short dark blonde hair. His whole face, older and more mature, made harder by a different life. But his eyes were the same, his lips, the expression of utter disbelief on his face. He was Oliver Queen, and seeing him before her again hurt more than she could have ever anticipated.

“You're dead”, were the only words to pass his lips, and she had to work hard to keep her patented smirk up, to keep her emotions in check and not let them show.

And then her _other_ name escaped his lips in a strangled whisper. He called her Laurel and for a moment, she froze.

No one in her world had ever called her Laurel; she had always been Dinah to her mother, and later just “D” in the foster homes. Dinah had been the girl who had left the foster system behind when she finally hit 18, the girl who had tried to steal a wallet from a rich kid in a club. And then somehow, with _him_ , Dinah had become Laurel, and no one else had ever called her that. After the Queen's Gambit had sunken, even Dinah had started to disappear, until one day there had been nothing left of her but Black Siren. But then Zoom ordered her to come to this cursed other Earth, where everything was wrong, wrong, wrong and people would just _not_ _stop_ _calling her Laurel_.  
  
He called her Laurel.

Without it being a conscious decision, she drew back her arm and hit him straight in the face.

And then she turned around and left into the night, uncaring of what anyone might do.

_...._

_When she had been nothing but a broken girl with dead parents, when there had been nowhere left to go, and nowhere left to run, he had shown her kindness. He had seen the good in her, had seen beyond the outer shell, beyond the empty flirtations, the manipulations and the threats. He had believed in her, and so she had started to believe in herself._

_He had been her home._

 

She found refuge in an abandoned clock tower, looking down at the city thoughtfully. Being here, seeing him – it was dredging up old and long buried memories and feelings. This wouldn't do at all.

She was Black Siren, the one who ruled the Glades with an iron fist. She couldn't afford to suddenly have a heart, or to _feel_ things.

The decision to confront this _other_ Green Arrow properly was made swiftly in that moment. She wouldn't hide like a little lost girl.

_...._

A day later, she only had to wait near a surveillance camera by the docks for about an hour until he showed up. She had whiled away the time by beating up some crooks that had lingered around near the waterfront and had mistakenly thought her to be easy prey.

He was suspicious, that much she could tell by his stance alone. Without a doubt he had reached out to the speedster in Central City for some information about her. Or maybe the Flash had reached out to him – who really knew in this strange world?

Not that she cared if he knew who she was and what she had done. She wasn't here to be judged; she was here because she had nowhere else to be.

And maybe, because she was curious as well.

They circled each other warily, two warriors seizing up their opponent, ready to strike.

“Why are you doing this?”, he finally asked, voice once more distorted. She wondered why he still did that – surely he had realized that she knew quite well who he was?

“Doing what?”, she replied lightly, tauntingly. This was who she was, she reminded herself. The one who taunts and manipulates and throws punches.

“Baiting me. You beat up criminals and then waited in sight of a surveillance camera for me to come here. What do you want?”, voice rough and impatient, but there was pain hidden there that she recognized all too well.

She took on her usual unaffected front, stopping her circling to pretend sinking into a more relaxed stance – show them that you didn't care and they would believe it, every single time.

“You know what's funny? Your Saint Laurel, and my Ollie – together, they would have saved the world.”

The Green Arrow flinched at this. Physically and noticeably _flinched_. So he wasn't as used to hiding his emotions as she was. There was still something human left, something that cared, something that grieved.

Interesting.

“And now look at us two, the leftovers. We should have died, and they should have lived. Maybe it's the ultimate bad joke. Maybe they should have been together instead, kicking ass and taking names and being so damn _good_.” And though it was meant to hurt _him_ , it also hurt her so much to say it out loud.

“What I want is simple: I want to know how you could have let your _Laurel_ , saint that she was, all around good and righteous, just _die_.”

And wasn't that almost the truth? She wanted to know how someone that good could just die, while others who didn't deserve it were still drawing breath.

“You were there with her, when she was injured, weren't you? How could you not protect her, not save her?”

Could it really be that easy to get this archer off his game? She couldn't really believe it, but he was frozen on the spot, bow uselessly clutched in his hand. Pathetic, that's how he looked to her.

Belatedly, she realized that she was no longer talking about Laurel; this was about her Oliver, and the regret she would carry around forever. Regret, that she hadn't gone with him on that boat, because then maybe, just maybe, he would still be alive.

“She was a freakin' saint, and you're just the dirty stain on her live story. She deserved better.”

His whole posture screamed defeat, bow clutched uselessly in his hand, head sunken. It was obvious to her that her words had hit their mark.  
She was certain that he wouldn't attack her, so she turned around and simply left.

_...._

“ _I don't want your money!”, she exclaimed, slapping the hand away that was offering her a few too large bills._  
“But you were just trying to steal it from me?“, he replied confused, expression puzzled and damn him for looking so good even when completely befuddled.  
“I don't want, or need, your charity!”

_Trying to steal his watch was one thing – no way in hell was she going to accept this. She wouldn't be brought that low to be just a good cause for some trust-fund rich boy._

 

The memories, as always, came unbidden and uninvited. Seeing Oliver again was bringing up so many things she had long thought buried and gone. She wasn't that girl anymore, the one who grieved and felt pain. She hadn't been that girl in a long time. So why did all these feelings, which she had locked away long ago, creep up again?

_...._

In the following days, while contemplating her next steps, Dinah focused on her research into this Earth's Oliver Queen. The old lady in the Glade's only remaining public library was surprisingly well versed in how to operate the library computers and didn't find it odd to demonstrate how something basic like internet searches worked to a woman who looked to be more than half her age. The strange keyboard and user interface, as well as ridiculously named search engine – Google, really? – took some getting used to for Dinah, painfully slow in comparison to the tech back home, but she managed.

For a moment she was tempted to find out more about Laurel Lance and her life in this world. About whether Quentin and Dinah Lance were still alive or not, or if she had grown up an orphan as well. But the truth was that she dreaded the answers too much. She had still been a baby when her father had died, and the memory of her mother had started to fade as well. Meeting her father and seeing her mother again might have been a priority for the lost girl Dinah used to be, but it wasn't for Black Siren. Concentrating her efforts on Oliver was safe, because she was looking for ways to hurt him, and nothing more.  
Her searches brought up many unpleasant and strange surprises: mainly the cheating – and that Laurel used to have _a sister_ in this universe. But also that Oliver had lost the company, something she could never imagine happening to her Ollie. He had always been too proud of his family name, too conscious as to what good he could do in the world with the money and the social standing. Too ideal to be inattentive or uncaring about his family's legacy.

Then there was the ex-fiancé. That one really came as a surprise, because for one, Dinah was pretty sure she had never even met the girl in any universe; and two, the newspaper articles didn't exactly make her out to be the kind of person Ollie would ever be interested in.

She just couldn't imagine any Earth where any version of her and Ollie had both been alive but never found their way back to each other.

And these were only things about Oliver Queen, the civilian. The bow wielding vigilante was a whole other story. From Hood, to Arrow, to Green Arrow: the words “killer” and “murderer” made a repeat appearance across the board. A violent history written in blood, a crusade for vengeance, not justice.

Really, the more she uncovered, the more she became sure that this Oliver Queen was just a cheap copy of the real deal that had died on her Earth.

 

And it made her so, so angry.

_...._

She carried that anger into their third confrontation.

This time he was quicker with his wit, more on the attack instead of defense. He slung petty insults her way, eerily mirroring the very things she had thought about him: how she was just a cheap imitation, nothing like the real Laurel Lance. Just a quirk of the universe, besmirching the memory of a good woman. Destructive and evil.

To Dinah, all of it just fueled the flames more.

Then and there on a dirty street, for the first time since her Oliver had left her, she simply _let go_ of her control and replied viciously with the bitter truth.

“As if you're any better! The Oliver I knew had a good heart. He believed in people, and saw the best in them. He was ready to forgive mistakes, and to give second chances. The man I loved was honest and kind, and caring. He would have done so much good in his life”, eyes blazing, fists raised, she felt every year since his loss, felt the grief churn within her like a wild storm over an ocean.

The truth was, his death hadn't broken her. Because she had been broken long before. After he was gone, she had simply stopped holding all the pieces together.

“He would have tried to save the whole damn world!”, it took all her control in that moment not to release her powers, to not scream her feelings into the night. She had never talked about Oliver's loss, had withdrawn from everyone who had known him, had let the wound fester over many years. Such was her penance.  
But this Oliver Queen, this _imposter_ , was just all _wrong._

“You're nothing like him and you never will be. But as you've so accurately pointed out..”, she changed her stance, locked away the part of her that had spilled over with _feelings_ , and focused on her target. “...I'm also nothing like your dead bird.”

And her sonic scream tore through the night, the harbinger of a long and bloody fight in the name of two dead people.

_...._

_They had met all of four times before, each time in the same club. And during every one of these first four meetings, rich boy had pissed her off._

_But the fifth time, he had to try and be a knight in shining armor. Bursting outside into the side alley, he was just in time to watch some thugs hightail it out of there. Dinah was too busy holding her bruised hands to the superficial knife wound in her side and limping out onto the street to pay him any real attention. She didn't need the help – she could defend herself, could take care of herself._

_She maintained this stance, even as he followed her for the next two blocks, trying to get her to accept his help._

_And finally, when she reasoned it to be sheer exhaustion and exasperation, she gave up and gave into his offer of a safe place and an excellently stocked med kit._

_But maybe, maybe, there was a tiny, minuscule part of her that actually liked this blonde pretty boy and was alright with letting him help._

_...._

_S_ he had not seen it coming.  
Tunnel vision had always been her problem – give her a target, let her loose and she would focus on nothing else.  
So when she was standing over a beaten and bloody Oliver Queen, chest heaving and fists raised, pain, rage and adrenaline coursing through her veins like fire, the last thing she expected was to get shot. And by a guy in a ridiculous helmet none the less.  
  
Damn it.  
  
She really _hated_ this world.

_...._

_His smile was wide, and for a moment no other comparison came to her mind but pure sunshine._

“ _Dinah Lance, prettiest girl in the whole world.”_

“ _Are you really calling me pretty when I'm bruised and bloody?”, she almost spat at him, holding the ice pack to her knuckles while he patched up her side._

“ _Sure I am. Just 'cause you got some scrapes and bruises, doesn't make you any less pretty”, and his grin was wide and so damn honest. “Besides, now that I finally know your name, I have to make proper use of it. And what better way to do that, than with grand declarations of beauty.”_

_Maybe she should have stayed away after all._

 

Bleeding to death in an alley really _hurt_. A lot. Especially after the sprinting she had done to put some distance between her and her shooter. It seemed fate had finally decided to revoke her “Get out of prison, free”-coupon, and now she was going to die alone, in a world that was not her own.  
At least the stars were familiar; if she had actually been able to see them through all the smog. Damn this world's air pollution too.  
  
_“I'll be back in two weeks. I love you,” he said, and kissed her goodbye on the docks.  
For all that she knew in that moment that she would miss him, she was also proud of her resolve to let him leave. It would have been so easy to go with him, to quit the little insignificant job in a flower shop she'd only recently gotten. But that was something her old self would have done. And she wasn't that girl any more. She was trying to turn over a new leaf. _

_And days later, when she would find out about the Queen's Gambit sinking, only one thought would tear through her pain: she should have been on that boat with him._

 

When she closed her eyes to clouds of smoke and dim street lights, she certainly didn't expect to ever open them again.

 _If only he had lived and she had died in his place..._  
  
And she expected even less to wake up, in what appeared to be vigilante central, connected to several medical machines, with her gunshot wound patched up.

 

What the hell was wrong with these people.

 


End file.
